New-Fangled Rose
Like a rose blooming out of season, the poems in Sue Sinclair’s newest collection are unexpected, unforgettably beautiful, and an unwavering gesture toward the slow emergency of climate crisis. With the lyrical brilliance and keen eye trained on beauty that’s characteristic of Sinclair, New-Fangled Rose reaches toward the light with reverent hands, photosynthesizing it into poems that are deft, musical, and unquestionably alive.
These poems cast a wide gaze over a fragile world, offering vibrant elegies to luna moths and crab apples, fireflies and trilliums. They examine what it is to build relationships in a world that feels increasingly precarious, like at any moment, something may end; like at any moment, something may begin.
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What a gift it is to have access to Sinclair’s granular and generous attention, and to her poetic sensibility that is almost painful in exactitude. Her philosophical mind walks through the thorny legacies of colonialism and entangled ecological crisis, showing us a way to gratitude. We can rely upon this necessary poetry as remedy for “today’s weak spirit” and as a reminder that “there was no lack in the world.” — Phoebe Wang, author of Waking Occupations
New-Fangled Rose chooses to survive climate anxiety through tender attention and finds divinity in small things when hope feels fleeting. These pre-emptive elegies grieve the species and embodiments we will lose to climate crisis, but Sinclair offers them this “headlong feral kind of care” while they are still here. — Rebecca Salazar, author of Antibody
In these poems philosophy encounters life and makes sounds that are beautiful and terrible — thank God Sinclair allows the encounter: “When I try believing in heaven, I imagine a place / where nothing withdraws from me: it feels a little like that here.” — Luke Hathaway, author of The Affirmations
These poems leave behind a gratifying ache: they’re full of Sinclair’s intoxicating thinking-through, images that make my head rush, but also the “beautiful tar, satisfying grime” that oozes from the heart of being-here. I came out of New-Fangled Rose feeling a little sadder, a lot more vulnerable to being changed by whatever weird beauty awaits. — Dominique Béchard, author of One Dog Town
Sue Sinclair (she/her) grew up in Newfoundland on the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk. She is the author of six previous collections of poetry, including most recently Almost Beauty: New and Selected Poems (Goose Lane Editions, 2022), winner of New Brunswick’s Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Heaven’s Thieves (Brick Books, 2016) won the Pat Lowther Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman. Sue teaches creative writing at the University of New Brunswick on Wəlastəkwey territory, land of the “beautiful and bountiful river.”
